1. Field
The present invention is in the field of contact center service and pertains particularly to methods and apparatus for processing deferrable interaction requests in a contact center according to customer schedule.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
In the field of contact center service, contact centers exist for the purpose of customer fulfillment relative to sales and service. State of art contact centers are capable of managing communications over several different channels including voice, messaging, and other Web-based communication such as chat, form submission, Web invitation, and link redirection.
Customers and visitors may initiate contact with a contact center in a variety of ways. The contact center may be reached by email, chat request, text messaging, telephone, cellular telephone, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), Web form submission, hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) link redirect, and URL activation.
One challenge for contact centers is to be in a position to assist customers at a time that is most convenient for the customer. Successful handling of incoming traffic over any channel depends upon a variety of conditions. Most notable, for requests where live interaction with an agent or automated process is desired, the customer waits for the agent or process to become available. The customer may have scheduled duties and other responsibilities and may not be amenable to a long wait in queue. Many call centers have a “call me back” feature wherein a customer may be prompted to accept a call back from the center after making intent known that the customer desires interaction with the center. The call beck feature or option may be utilized in messaging, Web interaction, form submission, voice call, and VoIP.
Use of a call back feature by customers may rise dramatically if the center is experiencing peak traffic and resources are currently not available to handle requests for interaction. The call back feature is relatively generic in that it does not directly promise or guarantee that a call back response associated with a request is forthcoming. Moreover, the call back windows (time range for return call) are dictated by the contact center and the customer may not be quite sure that the request will be responded, let alone, when the response is likely to occur.
Therefore, what is clearly needed is a method and apparatus for defining the start time of processing interaction requests according to customer preferences.